Asha Javeed

(with files from AP)

Amer­i­can Air­lines (AA) is as­sur­ing cus­tomers that they'll see no im­me­di­ate changes af­ter its par­ent com­pa­ny AMR Cor­po­ra­tion, filed for Chap­ter 11 re­or­gan­i­sa­tion in the US Bank­rupt­cy Court yes­ter­day."Our cus­tomers will see no im­me­di­ate change as a re­sult of the fil­ing, and can be con­fi­dent that they can con­tin­ue de­pend­ing on us. We are fly­ing our reg­u­lar sched­ules, and we will con­tin­ue to ho­n­our tick­ets and reser­va­tions, and make ex­changes and re­funds as usu­al; ful­ly main­tain our AAd­van­tage and oth­er cus­tomer ser­vice pro­grams; and pay our sup­pli­ers for goods and ser­vices re­ceived af­ter the fil­ing," re­spond­ed Martha Pan­tin, AA's di­rec­tor of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions to a query from the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.

"We in­tend to main­tain a strong pres­ence in do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets while us­ing the flex­i­bil­i­ty of our fleet re­new­al pro­gram to re­tire or re­move less-ef­fi­cient air­craft in our fleet," she said.Wayne Ro­driguez, pres­i­dent of the Trav­el Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go point­ed out that this has hap­pened be­fore with big air­lines and they've al­ways come out stronger.He said agents were not un­du­ly wor­ried, point­ing out that he was booked to trav­el with AA in De­cem­ber.Delta, Unit­ed, Con­ti­nen­tal and US Air­ways have all sought Chap­ter 11 bank­rupt­cy pro­tec­tion.

The com­pa­ny al­so re­placed its CEO, and the in­com­ing leader said Amer­i­can would prob­a­bly cut its flight sched­ule "mod­est­ly" while it re­or­ga­nizes, the As­so­ci­at­ed Press wire ser­vice re­port­ed.Amer­i­can said its fre­quent-fli­er pro­gram would be un­af­fect­ed.AMR Corp, which owns Amer­i­can, was the on­ly ma­jor US air­line com­pa­ny that did not file for bank­rupt­cy pro­tec­tion af­ter the Sept. 11 at­tacks, which caused a deep slump in the in­dus­try.Bank­rupt­cy fil­ings al­lowed Amer­i­can's com­peti­tors to shed cost­ly labour con­tracts, un­bur­den them­selves of debt and start mak­ing mon­ey again. Amer­i­can was stuck with high­er costs, and had to match its com­peti­tors' low­er fares or lose mon­ey.

Oth­er air­lines al­so grew by pur­su­ing ac­qui­si­tions and ex­pand­ing over­seas. Amer­i­can was the biggest air­line in the world in 2008, but has been sur­passed by Unit­ed, which com­bined with Con­ti­nen­tal, and Delta, which com­bined with North­west.Delta was the last ma­jor air­line to file for bank­rupt­cy pro­tec­tion, in 2005.In an­nounc­ing the bank­rupt­cy fil­ing, AMR said CEO Ger­ard Arpey, a vet­er­an of the com­pa­ny for al­most three decades, had stepped down and was re­placed by Thomas W Hor­ton, the com­pa­ny pres­i­dent.

Hor­ton said the board of di­rec­tors unan­i­mous­ly de­cid­ed to file for bank­rupt­cy af­ter meet­ing Mon­day in New York and again by con­fer­ence call on Mon­day night.In a fil­ing with fed­er­al bank­rupt­cy court in New York, AMR said it had US$29.6 bil­lion in debt and US$24.7 bil­lion in as­sets.In ad­di­tion to re­duc­ing the flight sched­ule, Hor­ton said there would prob­a­bly be cor­re­spond­ing job cuts. Amer­i­can has about 78,000 em­ploy­ees and serves 240,000 pas­sen­gers per day.In a glob­al press re­lease yes­ter­day, AA said it had US$4.1 bil­lion in cash to en­sure un­in­ter­rupt­ed sup­ply of goods and ser­vices dur­ing pro­ceed­ings.

Thomas W. Hor­ton, Chair­man, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer and Pres­i­dent of AMR and Amer­i­can Air­lines, said, "This was a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion, but it is the nec­es­sary and right path for us to take-and take now-to be­come a more ef­fi­cient, fi­nan­cial­ly stronger, and com­pet­i­tive air­line.The As­so­ci­at­ed Press (AP) re­port­ed that the on­ly risk to pas­sen­gers is if the re­struc­tur­ing fails, the air­line ul­ti­mate­ly liq­ui­dates and ceas­es to fly.Amer­i­can Air­lines, Amer­i­can Ea­gle and the Amer­i­can­Con­nec­tion car­ri­er serve 260 air­ports in more than 50 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries with, on av­er­age, more than 3,300 dai­ly flights.

AP